


A Good Day's Work

by TeamTired



Category: Rational Fiction - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 01:35:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10583667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeamTired/pseuds/TeamTired
Summary: Submission for Rational Fiction Biweekly Challenge: "Weirdtopia"Reddit Name: CaptainLoggers





	

I woke with a start and glanced at the local communications network, recognizing a signal from the home office. It’s hard to remember the last time I had a few good dormant moments, but there’s no changing it any more than there is changing who I am. My name is Thomas Hobart, and enforcement like me simply can’t take a day off. 

After taking a few moments to acclimate to being alert, I put myself in order and made a beeline from my favorite resting place through one of the city’s smaller capillaries into a major artery of transit, moving against the flow of traffic towards the signal I had been sent. I had no way of knowing if this was a false alarm, some bad seed gone rogue, or full blown war in the streets; nobody in our line of work had that luxury. The system would break down if an agent like me took even a moment to double think orders, or if we ever showed mercy without cause. 

Halfway down the trail of signals, I took an off-ramp to stop by an old informant: Denny. I slowed down and dropped out of transit, finding myself directly within mutual arm’s reach. As soon as our eyes met, they presented their hand for a handshake. Everyone knows that the handshake comes first, before business or pleasure. In my short career I’d popped more perps than I could count for refusing to shake hands. As we grasped both our sets of hands together, a flood of relief spread through the two of us. Our hands fit perfectly and comfortably, like they had been made for each other, and in our intricate shaking and grasping, we expertly confirmed each other’s identities.

“It’s good to see you Denny,” I said with a smile.

“Good to see you Tommy, check out what I’ve got here,” they said, passing me a packet of clues and evidence they had scavenged from their block of territory. Some of it just looked like rubbish, but a few stray scraps looked like proof that there had been foreigners in this neck of the woods, as if that was news. Denny lived on the edge, and that meant constantly coming up against the scum that kept trying to make our city their home. 

I waved good bye to Denny and sped up, weaving expertly back into the flow of traffic, this time towards the center of town. A little while later I slowed down again, this time stopping at a local agency intel node and making my way inside. The first agent that met my gaze inside was an old friend: Bobby, the best damn intelligence officer I knew of. Wordlessly, we grasped one hand each in a different shake than I had done with Denny. It was hard to explain, but despite the fact that Denny was part of our organization, it was always different when it was a real officer you were shaking hands with. That was just the way we did business: good guy or bad guy, informant or officer, you could always tell from the shake. Outside of a few young upstarts that cropped up every now and again in backwood intel nodes like this one, there was almost never trouble within the walls of an agency facility. Thankfully I’d never had to pop another enforcement officer, though of course I’d rather die than even hesitate if it ever came time to do the deed.

Between our other two hands, I handed Bobby the intel I had gathered on my way here. 

“Denny says hi,” I said with a smile. 

Bobby cracked a grin of their own but said nothing, retreating to their work deeper in the center of the node. This sort of errand work wasn’t my favorite part of the job, nor was it the most glorious, but I still took a simple pleasure in it. 

As I left the facility, I turned back and watched a swarm of drones burst out of the facility, undoubtedly based on in the intel I had just passed to Bobby. Our city had been using drones to augment officers for over sixty years now, far longer than I had been around, and ever since the day the drones came online, things had been mostly smooth sailing. The drones could disable recognizable weapons, mark identified perps, and even flat out kill, should they encounter the right target. Eyes on the streets like myself were essential, but without automation, it would be impossible to get a good days work done. 

I got on the road again, moving closer to city center. The thump of the city living and breathing around me filled my senses, but I didn’t let it distract me. An officer with a short attention span was a dead one, without exception. 

I downshifted into cruising speed again as I traveled my beat, looking for any trouble. The city was peaceful, for the most part, and citizens went about their duties, keeping the city running without fail. A few citizens stopped me, meeting my gaze and immediately presenting their hands for a handshake. I went down the line, grinning as I clasped each in turn. After we each had confirmed mutual identities, we shared news of the day. No citizen wanted for food, water, or shelter, and none of us could remember a serious threat to our city in decades, but it was only because of our efficient and mutual work on public safety. 

A few minutes later, I happened upon a citizen who wasn’t looking quite right. They staggered and swayed as they traveled. My trained eyes told me something wasn’t quite right, but when I rolled up to them, they presented their hands for a handshake, an excellent sign. Inability to shake hands was a sign that things were beyond salvage, every time. The citizen confidently grasped my left hand with theirs, but their right fumbled, and as I pulled my right hand away, I looked down to see a foul green liquid, which this citizen had presumably coughed up a few minutes ago. 

“Hey, you don’t look so hot,” I said, comfortingly but firmly, grabbing them by the shoulders and sitting them down.

“Yeah, I think something’s wrong with me,” they said as they turned away from me, coughing up another spurt of liquid, this time a sickly yellow. Things weren’t looking good, but every officer like me had tools on hand to help before things became too drastic.

“It’s going to be alright,” I said reassuringly, spraying them down with a chemical I kept on my person. “This should help, just take it easy, take a few days off work, and keep away from anybody else.” 

They smiled at me, and maybe it was my imagination, or some blind hope, but already they looked a little better. Of course, I could never be sure. Keeping the populace healthy was part of keeping the populace safe, but there was never a guarantee that something like this wouldn’t spread. 

“My name’s Officer Thomas Hobart, what’s yours?” I asked, partly out of a desire to calm my patient down, and partly out of a desire to gather more information. 

“Eliza,” they said, already looking a little more healthy and energetic. There wasn’t anything more I could do; only time would tell if Eliza would survive or be a goner. Civilian safety was a priority, but not the chief priority. Above all, the body of the city came first.

As I traveled away from Eliza, I made it halfway back to the local transit channel when I heard an explosion. Looking back, there was only a smear where Eliza had stood. I couldn’t help but wince. There was always a chance that a citizen could fight off an infection, but when things reached a tipping point, they would flip the switch every dutiful citizen carried, popping themselves and sterilizing the area. Of course, no one else in this part of town even batted an eye. Irrecoverable infection and subsequent self-sacrifice was much rarer near city center, but only thanks to the hard work of citizens out here on the fringes, fighting the good fight. 

It didn’t make me scared, knowing any one of us could be asked to give ourselves up at any moment for the greater good. If anything, it was comforting. I hadn’t even considered an alternative until a few weeks back when I heard about a group of ruffians down South who had totally disabled their switches and had started grabbing power from anywhere they could get it. Even our special forces, a group of natural killers that specialized in citizens gone rogue had been unable to breach their headquarters. Thankfully, somebody up there was watching out for us. Just when the local enforcement down there had found themselves at a loss, the whole lot of them got snared, and their hideout was burned to the ground, leaving nothing behind. It had been a miracle. 

Bringing my attention back to the smear on the ground in front of me, I dropped a signal, calling for a cordon on the area. A few moments later, a fellow officer appeared. We shook hands silently before introducing ourselves.

“My name’s Officer Thomas Hobart, I tried to help them but I was too late,” I said, meeting the much larger officer’s gaze. 

“That’s alright kid, you did the best you could, especially with the quick thinking on that cordon. The name’s Officer Tabitha Charlotte and I’ll take it from here,” they said confidently, moving towards the next group of citizens. 

I stayed behind to direct traffic, waving over another group of officers as they arrived from the nearest transit channel. It was obvious that this situation required direct action, and that meant handing things off to more well equipped and differently trained officers. Officers Michael, Nancy, Nicole, and Norbert were on the scene next, all summoned by my signal to all available enforcement, and I wasted no time in directing them towards where Eliza had popped. 

I watched the last of the officers moved away, setting about cordoning off the area, interviewing and shaking hands with citizens, and investigating the area. When I was confident my part was done, I took off, back to my beat. The people of this city were in good hands, as long as they remembered their handshakes, behaved themselves, and stayed healthy. With luck, I could easily see this town running for another twenty years without a major incident. Our particular brand of enforcement was just that good. 

Fourteen orders of magnitude above the scene, a recently retired gentleman sneezed. 

“Huh, must have a cold coming on, damn sinuses are always acting up,” he said.

**Author's Note:**

> So yes, this was a simplified depiction of the human immune system, with character initials standing for cell types. TH = Helper T Cell, TC = Cytotoxic T Cell, D = Dendrite, B = B Cell, E = Epithelial Cell, M = Macrophage, and N = Neutrophil. The "nodes" are literally lymph nodes, and immune cells can travel through both the bloodstream and specialized channels between the nodes. The drones are antibodies, which can do everything mentioned and even more. The "natural killers" are a celltype that are literally called Natural Killer cells, and the ruffians mentioned were the start of a colon cancer, removed by a routine screening colonoscopy. 
> 
> Consider this a rational / more accurate depiction of Osmosis Jones. In the immune system, there is no real good or evil, only a complex series of handshakes and pattern matching that all (usually) works pretty well for the better part of a century.


End file.
